I was greeted this morning with a pretty significant change on my Facebook desktop. When I hovered my mouse over a post to “Like” it, I was given icons for numerous reactions.
As Gizmodo already broke this morning, on February 24th Facebook launched their “reactions” capability. So instead of merely “liking” a post, you can now be a little more specific to how you’re feeling about a post.
How do you “react”? It’s easy! On the desktop, simply hover your mouse over the “Like” area of a post and the icons will pop up. Select the icon that matches how you feel. If you click “Like” it will continue to act like the classic “Like” button. As of now, you can react to original posts, but I don’t see the capability for comments yet (you can still “like” comments). Just refresh the cache if you aren’t seeing this capability yet.
On the mobile versions, Facebook pushed out an update this week that includes the reactions. On my iOS version of Facebook, I was able to just press my finger on the “Like” button of the original post and the reaction icons pop up. If you don’t see them yet, make sure you close your existing version of Facebook and open the recently updated version.
If you have a well-reacted-to post, you can view the combined reactions too, as seen in the image below.
I am over-the-moon about this new feature. It was really getting to me last month when I wanted to share my feelings about David Bowie and Alan Rickman’s deaths. I didn’t want to “like” posts…but now Facebook users can be more specific to how they really feel (such as with the “sad” icon).
Note: I posted that status in the top photo this morning, thinking that the angry face was a “Dislike” button. It’s called “Angry”…and some media outlets (such as Gizmodo) are still complaining about “Dislike” not being an option.
Thank you Facebook for listening to your customers!
What do you think about Facebook’s new reactions? Let us know in the comments!
